Guild Wars 2

Evan Lesh.3295:

If point gains were arbitrary as you describe, then there would be no upper bound on MMR, and you would see people who play a lot with 10k rating at the top of the leaderboard. This is not accurate and just takes us back to seasons 1-4.

The reason you are gaining very little is because you are expected to win all those matches and your rating is already accurate. When you lose a match you are expected to win, you take a decent hit. Your history shows that you can easily maintain your rating, which is good. If you’re already one of the best players, why do you need your rating to continually rise?

I can understand the argument that high-skilled players might want some sense of progression past being number 1, but that is outside the scope of MMR. This is one of the reasons you consistently get more rewards while highly rated.

Hi Evan,

While going putting limit on MMR games is good for the reasons you’ve mentioned the biggest problem is that “I can understand the argument that high-skilled players might want some sense of progression past being number 1, but that is outside the scope of MMR. This is one of the reasons you consistently get more rewards while highly rated.”

There’s just no incentive to queue besides small gold rewards after you get into the top 100/25/10 or w/e that players goal is.

Queuing at your ‘max’ rating is pretty much guaranteeing that you WILL decline, so people WILL stop playing… obviously this bad. Maybe a further incentive like every game you play in the top 100 yields ‘x’ reward…

Even though there are technically higher rewards already, the differences are unnoticeable. I’m not certain of the solution is exactly other than that there needs to be more incentive to keep playing.

Games at legend are a myth. They don’t exist.

I have a very effective build, I’ve come up with a name for it : mesmer

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Sounds like that you was playing 2 of the most face roll class’s In the game and now have to actually play the game insead.

If you was a true necro player you would not sit there and give up on day 2 also making this thread. Adapt and change your build. Us thieves and warriors have been a laughing stock for months and probably still are yet we still try.

Rap Tiger.1257:

Another reaper crying because a little nerf chill ….

I like when people comment who haven’t read patch notes they are referencing, the post they are commenting on, or have ever actually played pvp above amber.

Novuake.2691:

Please for the love of all that is holy, lets get rid of these…

This isn’t enough, necros need to be brought down because too op. Get rid of chill cdr increase, and maybe slow. Remove life force generation from skills, only gain from deaths. Remove dmg reduction from death shroud. Remove weakness from curses, because holy moly- completely op. Remove might gain from spite, because deeps too high. Necros are supposed to immobile, so they should only have 1 dodge instead of 2. I think this will balance necros.

tl;dr necro nerfs, overall balance changes were the exact opposite I was hoping to see (along with many others I would think) and killed the only reason I was still playing this game. Probably done for the foreseeable future

I’m not a wvw player. I was primarily a pve player, but due to the state of pve (lack of any new content since HoT launch and lack of living world from 15 months), I went to my much more less played pvp. But with the new reward tracks and division system, I finally had the incentive I needed to play pvp. The ONLY reason I was playing the games since ~January at all was because of pvp, which is far more replayable than any pve content in the game.

Season 2 was a huge step forward in the right direction for overall quality of pvp and balance. Further improvements did need to happen, but the outlook of spvp was a good one. Some things were imbalanced, but not by much.

This patches balance were the complete opposite of the changes I wanted to see, and I’m pretty sure the opposite of what most people wanted to see. It’s very obvious the changes were intended for the wvw audience, and that’s great for that crowd, but it set pvp back to a worse state than season 1 imo. If in 6 months the game is in a worse state, thats a bad sign… I’d be ok if the changes were bad but low impact, but the changes were just devastating in pvp.

In my mind the two goals for a healthy pvp game is having build diversity and counterplay. Bunker meta is inherently anti-counterplay- its a just a ’I’ll heal everything and never die’ while not even trying to kill other people. That would be fine if there was a class that punished that kind of play, but no class is even close to being able to say that. Just look at all the hubbub of season 1 to see why this unhealthy. Now look at the changes- offense was nerfed across the board (necro/engi and rev less so), but the defense which is out of control right now gets untouched. Without hotfixes, its looking very possible s3 will be as bad if not worse than s1. In fact, if that band-aid fix of no class stacking didn’t exist, I’m 100% certain nobody would ever die outside of moas (which still may be the case for s3).

The best thing for pvp is to have as much class and build viability as possible. Season 2, only 6 classes were ‘meta’, but guardian was verry close to being competitive. They are the only class that can reliably fight mesmers and if some classes reflects got toned down they would have been fine imo. Instead they got nerfed, removing their hope of being viable. Thieves have been pushed forward a bit and we’ll see how that plays out. Warriors are better but I don’t think they are good enough yet to even take a necro’s place on a team which is saying something.

But necros have been gutted in pvp. Theres no build anymore that allows them to apply enough pressure while have any kind of survivabilty (which is already the lowest of any class). Engis pretty much WERE slick shoes, and while it definitely was OP and needed a nerf, all kill potential engis had was gutted along with it. With both of these classes being so much worse than the top 4 now, you really only have 4 viable classes (maybe a fifth with thief… but I doubt it.)

Pvp desperately needed defense to be nerfed, but eles (already top 4 class), was untouched, revs got a slap on the wrist, stability change is huge improvement to overall defense, search and rescue got nerfed but it wasn’t even necessary before as druids are so good with glyphs already. The biggest problem with engis was their defense, which are unchanged, and the thing I personally felt should have been nerfed for necros (if anything) was rise, because that alone is what makes them live while being supported with an ele.

1. class by a huge margin in solo q was condi mesmer-#1 duelist, #1 utility, and no real weaknesses substantial enough to matter gets BUFFED (not signifcantly but still, mind blown). Heck, if class stacking was still around you’d probably be seeing 5 condi mesmers in esl right about now.

The map changes to skyhammer/spirit watch are awesome, but does it matter when class balance is so bad that pvp itself is unplayable?

The 4/19 patch should be known as, reroll mesmer or gfto, and that’s what I’m doing. I love the game so this is such a bitter pill to swallow for me.

spvp would be dead instantly, this game has basically nothing to do as is, itd be the final nail in the coffin

Thief can be quite good against reapers purely dependant on the reapers build. If they are running the defensive curses/shouts build thats popular right now, its pretty much NEVER going to be worth it to try to train a necro 1v1as a thief. At the start of the game before he has life force possibly, but thats the only time.

If staff was blockable, necro would be dead overnight

Class stacking is bad. Going ele is a strong counter, but it only works when your teammates can take advantage of it. In fact the strongest counter is double ele, at which a team with 2+ necros pretty much autoloses.

But you can’t get that coordinated in solo queue so the best way you can deal with solo queue necros is probably power ranger, if thats your sole focus. It counters necro very well, but it sucks against pretty much everything else.

Also, condi mesmer (if you can actually get really tight with your rotations), completely dunks on them. Well, it dunks on everything. This build has the MOST impact on games right now.

This matchup is pretty infuriating. They literally do 7k dmg with staff 5, which has no wind up so you can’t dodge it. They swap to sword use sword 3 and maybe two, then spend all resources in dodging/blocking until their cds are off and kill you with a 2nd staff 5. I feel like I literally don’t even have a chance to hurt them

+1 for determination

Loboling.5293:

Yes, there are two MMRs one for ranked and one for unranked. So they do not interact.

Additionally, the unranked mmr has less of an impact in finding you a game. The game tries to match similar like players with you, but prioritizes just finding you a game.

@OP

You’re not alone! I find this season overall much better. My only concern is that the early periods of players climbing the ladder results in too many losing streaks for the lower rated players. So many losses in a row is discouraging and could result in people just not playing at all. If they have a soft mmr reset (like only demoting down 2 divisions at the start of a new season), it would be a drastic improvement.

Besides that, this season has improved in every way over the last.

Queue times have gotten a lot better (at least for me) recently. I think due to the more players in legend later in the season. Just throwing that out there

@Elia
Sorry to hear you’re having an unjoyable time in season 2, but as a lot of people are saying, your problems advancing are likely due to factors you haven’t considered because the ones you’ve listed are indeed non-factors.

Class stacking is absolutely abysmal for a team. Any team that has 3 or more of a class, literally any class, should lose the vast majority of the time. All you have to do is change up your build to hard counter that class (i.e. switching to runes of hoelbrak and sigils of generosity against mesmers/necros). Often there are many things you can do to weight the game in your favor.

I too consider the DH to be the second to worst class (though you can make a good argument for the thief), and losing to them is often a case of inexperience in identifying their tells and responding accordingly. The best way to overcome that is just to practice against DHs. Maybe join dueling channels are ask any DHs you know if you could practice against them. As a whole, I actually think the game is the most balanced its ever been. Every other meta previous had many more issues. Besides warrior, every class is viable to some degree, and even warrior is playable as condi zerker (to an extent).

Worth noting, a game that is within 100 points is actually a very close game and you shouldn’t write that off as a bad game. That means theres a lot of back and forth over who controls the map. A game has to be different by 250 points for one team to control at least 2 points the entire time.

If you want any more tips on how to advance, PM and I’ll see if I can help with more tailored advice.

Unholey.3264:

(Tier 5 Legend, 3 pips from prestige 2)

Please fix your system, Anet. That, and allow us to queue outside of HotM. We’ve only been asking for it since it went away…

tier in legendary is irrelevant to matchmaking, its just based on if youre in legend at all. Problem is everyone quits or goes to unranked after they hit legend.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say with About your first statement, you said above only 66% of the profession had a shot at legendary but excluded it in your reply, or have you had a change of heart?, but he just means that 2/3s of the professions are better than the other 1/3 and that you’ll have an easier time getting to legend with them then the bottom third. No matter what class you are playing, playing a f2p class (w/o specializations) is a significant handicap, even if its in the good 2/3. Hugely significant in terms of a single individuals ability to affect the outcome of an overall game.

Its significant enough that I would MUCH prefer to run a specialization to win the game than having myself be on the ‘statistically better’ mmr team.

You are trying to say that the team with the higher overall mmr is hugely advantaged, and this was the case at the start of the season, the majority of good players are already out of these ranges and you’re not having 5 legends playing against 5 ambers anymore. Maybe 1 legend playing an alt account occasionally, but one guy isn’t going to shut out entire teams. Knowing how to cooperate with his teammates and rotating probably is going to win the games.

My point being, weeks into the season, differences in mmr are no longer the deciding factor of a person’s ability to win games. Actually being better than your opponents is going to get you to win.

Again, any legend player on a tanked mmr account is not going to have a problem with winning games and getting back to legend. Helseth proved this when he took a viewers 18 loss streak account and won 8 straight games on it in solo queue.

The reason some veterans have have ratings lower than the starting mmr is because they deserve to be there based on their performance in the previous season. It may be very frustrating to not achieve the same division as before, but the goal of s2 was have division more directly reflect skill. Which is showing some hard truths on the below average pvpers.

If a person wishes to climb the ladder, group queueing will not have as much of an impact as asking a higher rated player how to rotate so they improve themselves.

@Fivedawgs.
You are replying to the posts, but I’m not sure you actually read them.

I solo queued every game through the divisions. And despite what you may believe, I didn’t just happen to be on the team with the 4 man queue 50 times in a row. And yes, I know how to check who was part of a team after the game. I do so every game. I won vs the few premades I played on the ladder. If a premade is in diamond, or ruby or even sapphire. They are there FOR A REASON. If they win games they’ll climb out until the reach a point where they balance out or hit legend. As I’ve said, there are no teams once you get to legend so all teams actually queuing ARE BEATABLE by solo queuers.

And again, I’m not saying there are fewer premades overall, I’m saying there are drastically fewer AT LEGEND (which is where it has a much stronger affect on the outcome of a game.)

Although, again, I am lead to believe there is fewer overall premade because like chaith said
And I’ve not seen any screenshots like the abundance of premade vs. Pug games from season 1.

Fivedawgs.4267:

Edit: This was a mouthful, but your questions seemed targeted directly at me based on your criteria. I hope you find this helpful! I look forward to seeing what you can come up with in s3!

Bolded statement, newflash you can only check for pre made at the end of the game. So I don’t know where you are getting your data. What I have noticed is that the number of pre made have increased, since it’s the only way to level up.[/quote]

Data is from my own experience, and as someone who is familiar with enough of the top players to immediately recognize a good team by players alone, I can tell you (as Chaith has), that no top teams are queuing this season. ANYONE in legend will tell you as much. I can’t say as much for the lower divisions because I’m not in them, but any teams NOT in legend are 100% beatable. As Evan Lesh even said, when he queues up with his friends, he still plays like a solo queuer. Unless its in legend, you can overcome teams with personal skill.

@EvanLesh

To preface your overall questions before I answer them so you know where my opinion is coming from : I’m a strict solo queuer and I got legend very quickly. I even made a post a few weeks ago about my 50 win streak getting there (d5 I think before I lost my first game, played over the first few weeks not the first couple days). Afterwards, I basically instantly stopped queuing into ranked after 1-2 games with 10+ min queue times. The reasoning was initially that yea, it was just the queue times and I had to take a break from burnout, but then the removal of the average queue time estimate makes me not even want to queue up at all when I log in because I can’t tell if it’ll take me 10 minutes or an hour to queue. The chance isn’t worth.

Now:

What would make legendary players happy to keep playing the game? Is it just quicker queue times? What if you could do other things while waiting? What if there was something other than leagues all together like unranked arena that legendary players could go to until more players make it to legendary?

For me personally, I have a several suggestions:
I would start by just re-adding the average queue timer. If I KNOW the queue times are lower than average, than its likely the legend queues are reasonable (the legend queues were always much longer the the time showed, but you could make an educated guess to how long you would be waiting.)

Quicker queue times in general would be great incentive, but that requires a higher population to pull from. You mentioned earlier that theres a balance between s1 and 2 where the game could make more balanced games while still separating at the top players, and I think this would be a big help in the overall experience and therefore overall population. Coming from experience, had I not climbed ultra quickly from ridiculously lopsided games for my first ~40 games, I would have queued up for more overall games. Even if I’m matched with poorer players on my team for the sake of a more balanced match, I’m ok with this because the games are more enjoyable overall if they are close games. Say I had a 60% win rate climbing up, not a 100% win rate it could have taken me 3-4x as many overall games to get to legend.

On your last question, what about alternative things to do in the wait time, I would be most interested in just playing pve while in queue, but as thats not an option, perhaps hotjoin. If I could work on my reward tracks by playing 2 games in hotjoin or unranked I would be much more interested in queuing up for legend because I can do something instead of afk for 30 minutes to miss the popup and get 5 minutes of dishonor (this happens to me too much) I think this is a a good suggestion overall.

On that note, give me another 10-15 seconds to click join on the popup!

Chaith is also right in that there are almost 0 premades in s2, which is AMAZING compared to season 1 in my opinion where every match as a solo queuer you end up against an esl team and you might as well afk after you sat through a 20 mintue queue, but this effect is a result of long queues and casualness in s2, nothing else. Bring solo q back and perhaps introduce automated tournaments like starcraft 2 introduced where groups can sign up for with additional rewards. Solo queue gives a pyschological effect on players where they feel the game is fair, even if the games were ALREADY fair. But that FEELING is IMPORTANT.

Edit: This was a mouthful, but your questions seemed targeted directly at me based on your criteria. I hope you find this helpful! I look forward to seeing what you can come up with in s3!

1.) Reintroduce solo queue
2.) Nerf revenant
3.) Reintroduce raid of the capricorn to unranked and get rid of skyhammer
4.) Reintroduce 8v8s or even introduce 10v10s to ranked/unranked
5.) Split balance on skills in pvp/pve

Morozzko.2136:

KreatE.7612:

much skill such balance
This new mmr is HILARIOUS and i’m loving every second of it. ALTHOUGH, I have had to hard carry plenty of games I would have otherwise lost. But still…. the advantage is so ridiculous on average.

S2 is glorious.

screen or it never be

Can only screen the last 10 matches in the match history
Honor system boiz

Sarrs.4831:

I’ve only just had my first two ‘unwinnable’ games at T3 Sapphire. It’s otherwise been a complete steamroll. How far did you get from 40 wins?

1 pip into ruby 4

much skill such balance
This new mmr is HILARIOUS and i’m loving every second of it. ALTHOUGH, I have had to hard carry plenty of games I would have otherwise lost. But still…. the advantage is so ridiculous on average.

S2 is glorious.

Edit: previously posted at 40-0. Updated since I originally posted. Now in early diamond. The games after the first 40 are 10x harder. Also worth noting, i have solo queued every game.

Edit2: 50-1 The dream is over. My first completely unwinnable game.

One thing I wish is that titles actually meant something. The billions of ingame titles makes it impossible for anyone to actually recognize something you’ve done on title alone (besides the eternal which everyone already has).

There are SOOO many of them as well, that they all drown each other out to make them all meaningless. There are 4 different wintersday titles now. Who cares if one person is an adept toymaker or another is a seasoned toymaker.

I wish that there was a reward for collecting titles like there is awards for achievements. Then they would actually feel like it was worth getting. Sort of like getting titles in gw1 gave you a better overall title for gw2. It sounds redundant, but I would even be more interested in title that you get if you have 30 titles. Who knows? Just SOME reward for titles. I have like 20 something titles, and I’d rather just not have anything.

/endrant

I was legend s3. I’m currently sapphire 5 after going 30 wins, zero losses. (Soloqueued every game)

This system works at separating divisoins SUPER FAST, but it creates massive loss streaks for the lower players but also is garunteed to create imbalanced games because there are too many divisions for the player base. The game cant match fair games if it can only pool from the players that are in sapphire 5.

A lot of posts on the forums/reddit have talked about how good/bad the story has been done and why and what not. To be kind, I had a less than positive feeling about the HoT narrative after I finished. The delivery of it was well done, but the actual thing I don’t feel as strongly for.

HOWEVER, the one moment in the whole narrative that instantly struck a chord with me was your old companion returning as one of Mordremoth’s tools temporarily. This was sooooo good for multiple reasons and I wanted to discuss them briefly.

Let me start by saying that my main’s sidekick was Sieran, and I loved her to death in the original campaign, even over the fan-favorite Tybalt (who I later went back and played through to see the difference). The original campaign had many critisicms like its ease / disjointedness / delivery, the actual narrative I still greatly enjoyed, and despite these critisicms I still think most people who complain can agree that it introduced some great characters in the lore. I think very few people would say they don’t fondly remember the first sidekick they played through on.

The whole reality rift stuff and fighting Mord in his strongest asset (his mind) wasn’t jiving with me, and it played out very cookie-cutter with B-iconic character after character appearing in the final fight. The ONLY thing I wasn’t expecting was the old companion. I had felt for the most part the original campaign was almost completely forgotten except a couple of characters littered throughout the maps. The events of the past were history in HoT. But then without warning Mordremoth pulls from your memories your old self-sacrificing companion.

My reaction was along the lines of initial shock “Sieran?!” and then instant hatred and overwhelming sense of wanting to pound Mord into oblivion “MORDY YOU SON OF A kitten, YOU MADE A BIG MISTAKE, I’M REALLY GONNA KILL YOU NOW BECAUSE NOW I CARE”

This actually plays into the fact the Mordemoths supposed to use your mind against you and makes sense plot-wise. It plays into (perhaps surprisingly more than expected), your old feelings about old characters that have gone on forgotten for too long. And what really knocks this very short but glorious moment in the story out of the park is the one line of dialogue the old companion gives you. Now its a little different per companion, but with Sieran, she says something like “Magister? Its so good to see you again.” She says this with a bit of confusion, but then her sincerity follows through in her voice. This one line of dialogue had me more emotional by FAR the rest of the story combined. I always remembered Sieran’s character as quirky, innoncent, and genuine. This one line of dialogue recaptured her personality so well.
The player characters response mimicked my own feelings so perfectly, “Sieran, its good to see you too.” Simplistic but perfectly succinct.

Tybalts presence pulls out the same feelings, (not as strong in my case because of my affection to Sieran), but also because of a less genuine line. The player character says “grab an apple and help me do this” . I can’t fault anet too much because of the obvious call back, but there was more to his character than his iconic joke. It felt less genuine. Don’t get me wrong, this is stilll an incredible moment.

I was discussing this with my girlfriend earlier who felt the same way, and wanted to see if anyone else felt the same. Let me know in the comments!
Also, if anyone at anet is reading this, give whoever came up with this amazing an idea an apple for me.

I queued into unranked, that worked

I like legend queuing up against legend, but this sucks

I agree with a lot of what Shiren.9532 said a few posts up. Especially about Eir’s death and Faolains.

Both deaths felt INCREDIBLY cheap. I didn’t have as much of a problem with cliches, cliches work sometimes and are relevant. Real life can be cliche at times so I have no beef. Knocking off major characters with unresolved issues without furthering the plot in any major way is just unnecessary though. Maybe its realistic to war, but thats just a bad excuse.

My other major isssue was with the Rata Novus arc. We literally spend an entire 1/4 of the game discovering an ancient city to find out it has a weakness! Are you kidding? We figured that out on are own and overall didn’t affect the story.

Other stuff that peeved me off:
1) All DE members and Trahearne were barely in the game whatsoever besides rytlock
2) Caithes reasoning for not talking to you (because I could only trust myself) was horrendous
3) Rytlock in walking 100 miles couldn’t explain wtf happened to him
4) Exalted were another plot line that never went anywhere
5) Never got to see some legendary dragon (but w/e)

The only thing I liked was seeing the order member in the final battle. That was a really nice callback and actual hit an emotional chord with me (The ONLY time in the entire HoT story)

Edit:
Just wanted to add, despite GW2s original personal story issues I much preferred it.

duo queued with a friend. 7 min queue time hit a premade->auto lose
7 min queue->; same premade-> lose
7 min queue-> again; same premade -> lose

WHY DO I PLAY THIS GAME
for the love of god split team queue
/endrant

Fade.1743:

KreatE.7612:

BWE1 patchnotes-> flat buffs to attunements putting tempest closer to reaching the right risk/reward for overload.

Another patch like that and tempest will op and even the super negative minority that flood these forums will be saying “I knew tempest was the greatest addition from the beginning”.

Let’s just look into the future and agree everyone loves the tempest !

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA….

Okay, no. The problem with buffing it to high heavens is that…ahem

We. Still. Have. The. Same. Problems. As. A. Class. That. We. Do. Now.

Nothing. Changes. And. Tempest. Would. Either. Be. Objectively. Better. Or. Remain. Objectively. Worse.

Bookah, I don’t know how to drill this into your head, but…it doesn’t promote a new playstyle. In PvE, it still suffers from the same problem staff has. Only being weak to interrupts and either locking you into or out of an attunement. And…no one in their right mind would use it with dagger or scepter. And if you do, I question the rightness of your mind.

So, no. I don’t want Tempest to be buffed so it’s a non-choice. I want tempest to be different. To offer me something new on my elementalist. If the reward is more damage for the risk of losing all damage, less damage would be preferable to that risk…

I’m guessing 3 months. 3 months and tempest will be your favorite class and we’ll be best friends <3<3<3.

You’ll regret all these posts and you’ll want to buy cookies for arenanet. It may not look like it now, but you’ll get there. 3 months.

BWE1 patchnotes→ flat buffs to attunements putting tempest closer to reaching the right risk/reward for overload.

Another patch like that and tempest will op and even the super negative minority that flood these forums will be saying “I knew tempest was the greatest addition from the beginning”.

Let’s just look into the future and agree everyone loves the tempest !

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

We gathered from you that, on the whole, Warhorn skills felt decent even if a few felt undertuned. We’ve made the following adjustments to bring them more in line with other profession skills.

The concepts behind overloading an element were pretty well received, however you called out that the time cost of overloading compared to the final rewards were too unbalanced. Overloads are intended as potent tools which are not always available – to push this feeling each of them has been given a stronger effect to bring some more parity to the risk vs. reward of using them.

Definitely headed a good step in the right direction! Thanks for listening to feedback anet

Kodiak.3281:

Every game mode has limited slots and every class and potential person is competing for those slots. So no, it’s really irrelevant or terrible way of looking at things but simply the way things are in this game.

I mean I get you guys want this to be something good, I want it to be good too, but it’s just not.

I think you missed the point of my post. I am not arguing the tempest is ‘good’, I’m saying its different, which is good. New playstyles open up variety to the game and options to the players to take something they like and feels good to them and be able to play that.

By your arguments on limited spots in parties we should just remove rangers from the game entirely because they aren’t top tier and therefore should not exist. And maybe disable necromancers too while we’re at it.

This would not be beneficial to the vast majority of players, only beneficial to min/maxers who don’t want to play with those people.

Many people (including myself) prefer the idea of how large attacks that have a detrimental consequence to them. I KNOW tempest is currently weak, but I like it for the PLAYSTYLE. This is healthy to the game. It introduces a new way to play and again, with tweaking may well be very strong. I’ll point out again that tempest is a work in progress and may well be completely OP on HoT release.

Gokil.2543:

This thread is based on the premise that DD ele will receive nerfs sooner rather than later.

I want d/d to be nerfed as much as the next guy (for spvp anyway), but I honestly don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon. I believe they aren’t going to balance anything until after HoT comes out because they need a stable balance to build their specializations off of. And when HoT comes out the balance will get shifted again so it seems almost redundant to tune them now.

I don’t think you have to worry about what would be the best way to nerf them just yet.

Avador.8934:

KreatE.7612:

The biggest reason I love the tempest is the new play-style that it brings to the table. The risk/reward mechanic involved in overloading attunements locking you out of them for an extended period of time for a surge in power is a very interesting new mechanic that the elementalist currently has unavailable to them.

New play style? Haha, good one bro, good one. Risk/Reward mechanic doesn’t work here because of lack of good reward.

HoT isn’t out yet, numbers are low now, agreed, but #s are easily tuned. I’m confident they will be tweaked based on BWE feedback. The playstyle IS there, its just weak with the current #s. Even though its weak, I still enjoy the direction of the tempest.

Jekkt.6045:

if you want risk/reward play fresh air, although the reward couldbne better the risk is definitely there.

This rolls back into the ‘glass cannon’ playstyle I mentioned earlier with staff ele. While fresh air is risky to play the on the spot decision making isn’t there, which was the point I was trying to point out when I mentioned thinking of when to overload. Glass cannon is very simple gameplay in that sense, you just always do high dmg and are squishy, its not very thoughtful.

Hence tempest promotes a new playstyle of risk/reward (that is new in that it requires on point decision making and play-by-play risk/rewards to a level elementalists have not had access to yet).

However, thats just one mans opinion. But my opinion is scientifically proven to be the right one.

Sorry, that was a lot longer than intended.
TLDR: Tempest has risk/reward playstyle that ele is lacking, and thats awesome!

Hi everybody, I just wanted to bring some love to the under appreciated Tempest! There have been a lot of less than warm responses to the new elementalist specialization due to a variety of reasons, while some complaints may not be entirely unfounded it’s not a reason to not LOVE the tempest.

The biggest reason I love the tempest is the new play-style that it brings to the table. The risk/reward mechanic involved in overloading attunements locking you out of them for an extended period of time for a surge in power is a very interesting new mechanic that the elementalist currently has unavailable to them.
(You could argue glass cannon zerk staff is high risk / high reward but in its current form is NOT, it is just a long range nuker with no significant counterplay (for/against hence loses any 1v1 in duels and also makes it op for dungeons because of lack of difficulty. This isn’t bad either because this glass cannon is its own unique playstle.)

But the concept of being able to overload gives in the moment decision making of do I need the extra dmg / healing vs will it hurt me in the long run is dramatically different than any current ele playstyles. Most if not all current ele play-styles are based around the complete opposite mentality utilizing very STABLE and CONSISTENT healling/damage/dmg reduction builds i.e. d/d cele and staff ele. This difference is what makes it so awesome! To me personally, that decision making of risk vs reward is far more interesting than the repetitiveness you find in current builds.

While it may be that the tempest overloads don’t push far enough into the risk/reward mechanic (not rewarding enough OR detrimental enough to make it feel like a new mechanic) and feels more like a kitten d/d ele, thats just a matter of tuning numbers (and it is in development mind you).

Edit: #s are a matter of tuning, changed to get point across.
Imagine if fire overload had a 600 radius and did 50k dmg over 4 seconds in cele gear. but then kicked you out of fire for 30 seconds. To me, that sounds AWESOME and hopefully anet will push it more in that direction as HoT gets closer.

A common complaint is that people think it doens’t fit any role that ele doens’t already have. My response:
1) Ele are already top tier in all game modes for a reason
2) The specializations aren’t designed to be superior to previous builds (that would just be unnecessary power creeping)
3) Specializations ARE desgined to promote new play-styles, which tempest DOES in a very cool way (or will moreso with small tuning)

These are my thoughts anyway, and I’m a genius so this has to be true.

Anyway, thanks arenanet because I think Tempest may well be the coolest and most interesting specialization you’ve come out with so far. <3 you guys

Luclinraider.2317:

Except I have……5 times now.

I did the initial patch…everything went fine. But every time I try to que for BG’s….this is what I get.

Anyone else getting this bug….basically making it so I cannot sPvP.

Same problem

zone.1073:

Very good feedback, thanks. I will be doing tests. Unholy Martyr does not clear conditions from yourself; it pulls conditions from allies to yourself like plague signet passive. I agree that this is a good grandmaster trait if you decide to drop 1 out of 3 wells. I liked wells for the extra long protection with Vampiric Rituals (Well of Power giving even more protection on vuln conversion), but perhaps this can work too.

I feel like your tweaks are fine because they change the build but achieve the same goals. The purpose of Banshee’s Wail is primarily to gain huge amounts of Life Force in group fights, similar to the purpose of Unholy Martyr. Life from Death gives consistent healing over time, similar to the effect of siphoning wells with Vampiric Rituals. Etc.

Thanks, it took me a while to realize unholy martyr wasn’t working like I thought lol.. However, its still ridiculously strong at keeping you in DS after having tested it.

And I 100% agree with you about Life from Death after testing. Banshee’s Wail will be better or even vampiric aura will heal more over the duration of 20 sec (not including the damage you would gain).

Well of power I still wouldn’t run over spectral armor (comparable protection), but easier to use and gives you insane life force.

However the life siphon off of vampiric rituals stacked with vampiric aura might make it more valuable. I’m curious as to how stacking your wells with well of blood as your heal and maybe even take the well of blood on revive trait would do. I’ll try testing when I can.

It’d lose the condi clear and have a larger cd on heal, but the overall healing from a well of blood with an extra 200 siphoning/sec would be a little crazy. I’m really reluctant to drop unholy martyr, but it’s worth a shot. Plus you could swap out the corruption mastery for either path of corruption or terror.

I tried this build with small modifications, and kudos. I’ve been experimenting with every and all necro builds since patch and dislike them all for various reasons. This build feels pretty good overall.

MAJOR modifications I’ve made:
1.) Life from Death over Banshee’s Wail. The 2k heal from deathshroud on a 10 sec cd is substantial.
2.) Spectral Armor over Well of Power. I’m not sure about this one but spectral armor is consistently strong where well of power I feel is only good in certain situations. The condi convert from consume conditions I don’t feel is significant enough to say 100% it needs to be there.
3.) Unholy Martyr over Vampiric Rituals. (Granted I’m running only 2 wells), but if you haven’t tried this trait you should. It can help you stay in deathshroud a hilariously long time, on top of being another form on consistent condi clear (which kind of compensates for not having well of power).

Minor modifications:
4.) Sigil of Leeching over generosity ( I don’t find generosity consistent enough)
5.) Sigil of Frailty (or doom) over smoldering. Smoldering doesn’t do nearly enough to warrant the sigil, but frailty and doom both act as cover condis for burning on top of a little extra reliable damage.
6.) Sigil of Blood over Air, it does about 350 less damage-ish, but you get 1k heals off of it every ~5 seconds. Though it is bugged and doesn’t show up in the combat log.

zone.1073:

Zhaid Zhem.6508:

On video you don’t place many many fire, or not at all … I’m okai with dhumfire but i think others runes like the good old rune of the Pack should be more profitable.

Interesting suggestion. Do you think pack rune would be better? I used pack rune by default at first but gradually evolved to Flame Legion. The swiftness on pack is unnecessary because of Banshee’s Wail, and this build gets fury in Shroud, and blind from heal is converted to fury with Power well. Though, pack runes would give more fury than that.

I don’t think pack/flame legion would make a significant difference either way. I actually am really enjoying flame legion. It really helps with dhuumfire and the extra 1.3 seconds of burn every 10 seconds is not neglible damage plus the 7% damage to burning targets makes up for the stat loss that you would have from pack.

I was one of the players who didn’t actually flip out from the pre-purchase controversy, but I understood everyone’s complaints and withheld from pre-purchasing myself.

Having said that, I think this Pre-Purchase Community Address is a great step forward for arenanet, showing that they both want to showcase their increasing communication with the fans and HoTs ability to grow moving forward.

Their ‘favoritism’ towards new players was purely unintentional miscommunication and offering a new character slot for veterans to make this crystal clear is perhaps unnecessary but greatly appreciated.

Being a huge fan of the game, I just wanted to say THANKS ANET.
You just got one more pre-purchase from me.